1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a common interface/conditional access (CI/CA) module and a method of transmitting data between a common interface card and an integrated circuit chip thereof.
2. Background
In a digital television, an integrated circuit (IC) chip is utilized for transmitting encoded TV signals to a common interface (CI) card for descrambling. The encoded TV signals may include control data or addresses for the CI card from a conditional access bus.
For transmitting the conditional access data/command between the CI card and the IC chip, the CI card has a data bus or an address bus, and the IC chip has a corresponding data bus or address bus. For transmitting the transport stream between the CI card and the IC chip, the CI card has a transport stream bus, and the IC chip has a corresponding stream bus.
However, since the IC chip uses two buses, i.e., the corresponding conditional access bus and the transport stream bus, for transmitting the conditional access data/command and the transport stream, more pins are needed for data transmission.